Picking spring tea leaves and dreaming of a simpler, healthier rural way of life

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March 31, 2015

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Picking spring tea leaves and dreaming of a simpler, healthier rural way of life

By Wang Yong | March 31, 2015, Tuesday |

Print Edition

“The rice smells scorched,” Luo Yafen smiled to my wife. “You’ve burnt too many stalks in the stove.”

It was the first time my wife had ever tried to cook rice on an open stove in an iron cauldron over fire — a typical scene in a Chinese rural kitchen.

On March 21, my wife and I visited Luo’s family in Suzhou’s Xishan (literally meaning “western hills”), a bucolic island on Taihu Lake. It was a sunny spring day. My wife had ventured to cook rice for lunch before we followed Luo to her family’s tea garden up in the nearby hills early in the afternoon, and picked the year’s first round of tea sprouts — the freshest.

Although she nearly “scorched” the rice because she didn’t know how to properly feed the stove with stalks, my wife was exalted at such a new experience so often elusive to us urbanites.

The rice tasted much more fragrant than that made in an electric cooker. Fully integrated with open air and fire, the rice emits the mild fragrance of nature itself. Along with the rice we ate some simple dishes of locally grown vegetables.

Then we drove a few minutes to Piao Miao Feng (literally meaning ethereal mountain), got out of the car, and walked through a narrow muddy path, all the way up to Luo’s family tea garden. Luo picked tea twice as fast as the rest of us. In about three hours, we picked only about 1.5 jin (a jin is equal to 500 grams).

We returned to Luo’s home before sunset, and started to sift fine tea sprouts from symbiotic leaves — those leaves are drinkable, too, but to guarantee high quality, Luo’s family insists on preserving only the finest sprouts for tea making.

At night, Luo’s father came home from a day’s work in town and, after finishing a simple supper quickly, he began to make tea in cauldrons. The tea leaves we had picked produced only 4 liang — less than half of one jin — of tea. My wife and I bought it, brought it back to Shanghai and shared it with friends. The tea is called Bi Luo Chun (literally meaning spring tea in the shape of conch), one of the best green teas in China.

Best sprouts

It was the first time we had bought tea we picked ourselves and witnessed the whole process of production — from picking to sifting to rolling. We saw how Luo’s dad and mom used only the best sprouts to make tea, unlike many tea dealers who sometimes mix different leaves together and sell it at exorbitant prices.

Xinmin Evening News reported on March 23 that experienced tea farmers like Luo’s parents are rare, as younger generations often flock to cities in search of higher incomes.

Luo teaches tea culture and engages in tea business in downtown Suzhou. In spring, the best season to pick tea sprouts, she often comes back to Xishan to help her parents. Her mother suffers a back problem from years of carrying heavy buckets of water to irrigate the tea garden in dry seasons.

Toiling and sweating

Luo says that her parents toil and sweat too hard, and yet they earn little. That’s why she has moved to downtown Suzhou to market her family’s tea, among other things.

Indeed, Luo and other “second-generation” tea farmers born in the 1980s have achieved initial success in helping market their parents’ home-made tea in such prosperous markets as Shanghai, Guangdong and even Taiwan.

According to Xinmin Evening News, although they may not be as experienced as their parents in making tea — which requires long time of stirring tea in extremely hot cauldrons with bare or gloved hands — these “second-generation” tea farmers understand how to market the products, especially through online sales.

But in the end, Xinmin Evening News concluded, these young tea farmers have to inherit their parents’ time-worn tea making skills, however difficult the skills are.

The newspaper suggested that public policies could be created to help tea farmers earn a better living so that they choose to stay in the countryside.

It’s my hope, too, that not just these young farmers, but people like us who have toiled hard in cities can make a living — simple yet healthy — on the farmland.

In my own case, working day in and day out in a high-rise office building in downtown Shanghai is really stifling, but having spent one day on Luo’s tea farmland, I felt quite refreshed.

If there’s a way for us urbanites to go to the countryside — in contrast to rural people flocking to cities — I would do it. But alas, it’s the hukou system again. While it’s well known that it’s difficult for migrant workers to obtain an urban hukou, it’s equally challenging for an urbanite to acquire a rural hukou.

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Picking spring tea leaves and dreaming of a simpler, healthier rural way of life

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